The Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets
"Lady Bronska? We have arrived. Please wake up."
"...I'm awake. I told you to call me Yerina."
I was still not used to being called by my newly acquired name. Judging by my delayed reaction, it was clear I still needed a lot of time to adjust.
When I woke up, the dream-version of myself was just escaping Soviet territorial waters, preparing to transfer personnel and cargo on the high seas near Copenhagen. The Soviet Navy's surface vessels had openly hesitated to operate in the Baltic Sea so close to NATO waters, and even their submarines seemed eager to avoid any potential clash.
The memory of that first day, which unfolded in a panoramic long take every time I closed my eyes, was a pool of reflection. Though it was a bitter past, wading through that pool was the only way to fish out the fragmented shards of my memory. I had no choice but to keep facing it.
The city I had barely escaped was Kaliningrad. It was an exclave separated from the rest of the Soviet Union, and, as Kim Philby had screamed, the westernmost march defending the Union from imperialism and capitalism.
After escaping Kaliningrad, the place where I established our new base was here in London. Aside from the Soviet homeland itself, the British Empire was where my father, the former head of the syndicate, had poured the most funds. It was even larger than our operations in East Germany or Poland, which said it all.
Thus, I did not lack the financial means to settle down. A sum of pounds closer to hundreds of millions than tens of millions was a veritable cornucopia for me and the individual syndicate members. However, it was far from enough to run the entire organization. No matter how illicit our operations were, we still had to worry about financial health to sustain the business.
With our headquarters blown to pieces, we couldn't hold the reins as tightly as before. Across various branches, betrayal, breach of trust, embezzlement, and desertion broke out as if in a race.
They should be competing to prove their loyalty right now, yet they pull this...
After surviving the life-threatening crises that repeatedly plagued my dreams and finally reaching London, I had to ruthlessly purge the syndicate, cutting away the rot with a heavy heart.
It was just past midnight when we returned to our safehouse in Greenwich from Southend. Though we called it a safehouse, it was merely an ordinary detached house in the English suburbs.
There was no risk of the UK Securities and Investments Board suspecting real estate fraud upon noticing that a small block of residential properties in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, Greater London, had been purchased all at once. Long before I arrived in London, these acquisitions had been carried out meticulously over several years under different buyers' names. It was inevitable that the entire block would fall into the syndicate's hands anyway; I had merely accelerated the timeline.
Right now, people dissatisfied with Margaret Thatcher's fifth term were overflowing not just in England, but across the entire British Empire. The public was solely focused on the volatile political landscape following the general election, and the Iron Lady herself would be far too busy deploying mounted police to Liverpool to suppress the protests.
"You've returned, Lady Yerina."
Waiting in the first-floor living room was my direct subordinate in charge of human resources. He was one of the four who had escaped Kaliningrad with me on the cruise ship.
"Is this something we need to discuss face-to-face?"
Seeing him wait up until this hour, it seemed he had a report that required an in-person meeting.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Very well. Let's go upstairs and talk."
Leading Pavel and the HR subordinate up to the second floor, I reflected on how precarious our operations still were, even if we had barely managed to stabilize.
We couldn't even contact our members in the Eastern Bloc under Soviet control. The syndicate's influence, which had once stretched across Europe like a spiderweb, was now barely enough to cover the British Isles.
Once we have some breathing room, I'll have to visit the other branches...
Scattered across Western Europe, there must be subordinates operating in isolated cells, desperately waiting for support from 'headquarters'. They were the ones I needed to salvage as soon as our foundation in the UK stabilized.
Although the leadership had changed, there had been no grand coronation. We had barely scraped together the ruins from blood and ashes, so there was more than enough justification for me to make a personal appearance. The only saving grace was that we didn't have to rebuild entirely from scratch.
London had served as the syndicate's hub for smuggling Western electronics and luxury goods into the Eastern Bloc. While Kaliningrad's headquarters was unmatched in terms of total accumulated wealth, London far surpassed even the headquarters when it came to the sheer volume of wealth flowing through it.
Because of this, there were some insolent fools who refused to recognize a young girl who had suddenly arrived from headquarters claiming to be the boss's—or more accurately, the former boss's—daughter as their leader. Fortunately, my magical prowess was more than enough to bring them to their knees in an instant. Not just physically, but in a business sense as well. Right now, I was like an avatar of legitimacy, authority, and power combined.
"So, what is this report about?"
After entering the office, I naturally took my seat behind the desk, leaving the HR subordinate standing in the center of the room.
Hesitating for a moment under my prompting, he finally answered.
"It is regarding the treatment of the traitors... I believe we may need to borrow your strength, Lady Yerina, which is why I came to speak with you."
"My strength? Care to explain so I can understand?"
I let out a soft hum and tilted my head. I thought the fate of those insolent fools who dared to deny my leadership had already been decided.
"Well, did you not say, milady, that we should foster unity among the remaining members by showing them the miserable end of the traitors?"
"I did."
"We have already rounded up the traitors inside a shipping container. We can end their lives at any moment upon your command."
That was indeed my order. I had decreed that the opportunists who wavered and harbored treacherous thoughts upon seeing the temporary downfall of our headquarters should all be sunk into the River Thames and the North Sea. The eels of the Thames would surely relish the flesh of opportunists.
"And?"
I asked, crossing my legs. If they could bury them at any moment, why did they need my strength? However, the subordinate's proposal turned out to be quite intriguing.
"So... since we're highlighting the fate of the traitors, you want to grind down their very souls? And film the process of their souls being eaten away in real-time to use as an example?"
"Yes, ma'am. Your powerful legitimacy and authority as Lord Bronsky's sole daughter are weapons in their own right, but they will shine even brighter when paired with your capabilities as a mage."
"That... actually makes sense. Can this be done at any time?"
"Just let us know in advance, and we will have everything prepared."
A mage of my caliber could easily inflict wounds solely on a soul without leaving a single scratch on the physical body, or even extract it entirely. The magic I had inflicted upon the Cambridge Five was an application of this very method.
While excessive reign of terror is a poison, a moderate amount of fear can effectively prevent subordinates from harboring dangerous thoughts. In my view, publicly gibbeting the traitors within the syndicate's inner courtyard would yield far more benefits than drawbacks. Rather than driving them to betray out of sheer terror of my cruelty, it would instill a sense of crisis and solidarity, making them realize they had to stick together.
"Let's do that. I'll check my schedule and let you know the date in writing or over the phone. Anything else?"
If I carved up my remaining time, I could probably squeeze out a few hours. If all else failed, I could just cut back on sleep.
"The document placed over there is a report that does not require your signature. It contains updates as of today... or rather, yesterday. It would be best to familiarize yourself with it."
"You mean this one. I'll look it over, so both of you may head out for the night. Oh, and brew me a cup of black tea on your way down."
I quickly scanned the document's cover and dismissed my subordinates. While I was fine thanks to my mage's body and being physically in my prime, I couldn't force the others to match my destructive sleep schedule. For the syndicate to function properly, the people at the top of the pyramid in my absence had to maintain peak condition at all times.
Just as my subordinate had said, a moderately thick, neatly arranged document sat on the table. Hearing that it didn't require my signature was a small relief.
Coincidentally, the desk in my office was identical to the mahogany desk from the Kaliningrad headquarters. It wasn't intentional; it was simply another smuggled item.
Rubbing my eyes to chase away the fatigue, I turned my gaze to the stack of papers.
It was a document summarizing the rapidly shifting structure of the syndicate since our relocation to London.
I suppose I have to review this before I sleep, too...
Going to bed early was out of the question again tonight. Although my bed was right next door—my subordinates had adamantly insisted on separating my office from my bedroom—the number of times I had actually lain down before sunrise could be counted on one hand.
I sipped the black tea my subordinate had brewed and flipped through the document. Just like the desk, the tea was stockpiled in the warehouse of the London branch—now our de facto headquarters—after our smuggling routes were cut off.
The contents of the report made my brow furrow.
While I was busy hunting down Kim Philby, the last member of the Cambridge Five, the Marseille branch in France had apparently dropped a bombshell, declaring independence and stating they would no longer follow the leadership of the syndicate headquarters.
A surge of anger welled up inside me as I thought of the syndicate's eastern borders, which had grown increasingly loose.
The day before yesterday it was Stockholm, and yesterday it was Lübeck. I thought I had cut away all the rot, yet rats kept slipping away from every corner.
Unlike rounding up the traitors within the UK, punishing these defectors required crossing borders.
...This is troublesome.
Since I had not yet fully fleshed out my cover identity, I had to wait a month or two before poking my head out into the light. Even just slaughtering the five big-shot commies had been an incredibly risky move.
Dismantling a significant portion of the espionage network the Soviets had woven inside the British Empire was certainly a noteworthy achievement, but every gain comes with a loss. Although I had been extremely cautious with the decapitation strike and timed it perfectly with the general election, the British Ministry of Magic and the Metropolitan Police Service must have realized the gravity of the situation by now.
I had completely eliminated the risk of having my every move monitored by the Materialists of Moscow, but aggressive expansion was still out of the question for the time being.
Even so, if there was one thing I desired, it was to dig deep into the very heart of this country. This wasn't just any nation; how many relics and spells must be secretly hidden in the deepest vaults of an empire on which the sun still never set?
I had already laid my hands on one national relic. Why not two? Or three? What was stopping me?
My instincts as a mage whispered to me. Achieve the heights you could not reach in your past life. Do not repeat your past mistakes.
At the same time, the inner voice of Yerina Bronska whispered as well. Was it not a lack of power that caused my father to fall so helplessly? Was he not discarded because his attempt to smuggle a national relic to the West—instead of presenting it to the Council and its Magisters—was exposed?
If the past me had possessed the strength to crush all those thugs trying to monopolize the relics, and if the Yerina of back then had possessed the power to preemptively block Moscow's resolutions, I wouldn't have died so helplessly, and the syndicate wouldn't have had its limbs ruthlessly severed.
Therefore, I would borrow the strength of the imperialists to strike down the communists. How much magic and how many relics must lie dormant within the corpse of a nation that once split the world in two? How beautiful would the world look when viewed from atop the burning ruins of the Kremlin?
Thus, this was both a step toward completing the achievements left unfinished in my past life, and a proxy for Yerina's vengeance.
Steeling my resolve, I spent the night reading through documents and writing out directives. Before I knew it, the sun began to rise in the east. The sound of The Times and The Guardian dropping into the mailbox signaled that it was finally time for me to sleep.
I really need to fix this disastrous sleep schedule...
Despite my thoughts, I ordered a subordinate to bring up the newspapers. For the second time tonight, I found myself thinking that I had to check just one more thing before going to bed.
There was no mention of Kim Philby's death in the papers. I had already instructed Pavel to ensure the body wouldn't be discovered until tomorrow or the day after.
Regardless, it was only right to grasp the political and economic landscape of the country I was using as my beachhead. Why on earth was Margaret Thatcher, who should have stepped down long ago, serving an unprecedented fifth term?